An FAA equipment outage at an air traffic control facility disrupted flights across several major northeastern airports on Monday, September 21, delaying hundreds of trips and forcing dozens of aircraft to divert.
The trouble initially affected Newark Liberty International Airport, Philadelphia International Airport and Teterboro Airport before spreading to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, creating broader ripple effects across the wider New York and Philadelphia regions.
FAA cites frequency problems at Philadelphia TRACON
The FAA said it paused flights into Newark, Philadelphia and Teterboro because of problems with some frequencies at Philadelphia TRACON. The Terminal Radar Approach Control facility uses radar and radio communications to guide aircraft arriving in and departing from the region.
According to CBS News, a ground stop for Newark was ordered around 10 a.m. and extended several times, through at least 2:45 p.m. The agency later issued stops for JFK at 12:38 p.m. and LaGuardia at 12:43 p.m., with both initially scheduled to remain in effect until 2 p.m.
ABC7 reported that departures at Newark and Philadelphia were stopped during the outage. Air traffic controllers advised pilots about radio problems at the TRACON facility, while Flightradar24 data showed multiple planes lined up at both airports waiting to leave.
Hundreds of delays and dozens of diversions
The outage delayed hundreds of flights headed to Newark and Philadelphia. By 1 p.m. Eastern time, nearly 250 flights into and out of Newark had been delayed, representing more than one-fifth of the airport’s daily schedule, according to FlightAware.
The disruption also forced 67 Newark-bound flights to divert to other airports by around 1 p.m., Flightradar24 data showed. The affected aircraft included international services arriving from Iceland, Egypt, Greece, Spain and France.
A United Airlines flight from Berlin was diverted to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, while an SAS flight traveling from Stockholm to Newark was redirected to Washington Dulles International Airport. United, whose busiest international hub is Newark, waived change fees for customers affected by the disruption.
Officials had not disclosed the cause of the equipment failure. Travelers were encouraged to check with their airlines for the latest information about individual flights.
The outage renewed attention on the aging technology used in the U.S. air traffic control system. CNBC noted that the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar modernization effort last year. On Monday, the Transportation Department and FAA also introduced an artificial intelligence-powered tool intended to analyze data and reduce flight delays, beginning in Washington, D.C.
